Ogden sets out a movement in contemporary psychoanalysis toward a new
sensibility, reflecting a shift in emphasis from what he calls
"epistemological psychoanalysis" (having to do with knowing and
understanding) to "ontological psychoanalysis" (having to do with being
and becoming).
Ogden clinically illustrates his way of dreaming the analytic session
and of inventing psychoanalysis with each patient. Using the works of
Winnicott and Bion, he finds a turn in the analytic conception of mind
from conceiving of it as a thing-a "mental apparatus"-to viewing mind as
a living process located in the very act of experiencing. Ogden closes
the volume with discussions of being and becoming that occur in reading
the poetry of Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson, and in the practice of
analytic writing.
This book will be of great interest not only to psychoanalysts and
psychotherapists interested in the shift in analytic theory and practice
Ogden describes, but also to those interested in ideas concerning the
way the mind and human experiencing are created.